The only sounds in the medlab were the whirring of water in the medical tank.
Cenz was in there still, unmoving. At least his limbs – at least a few of his polyps were now moving in a way that seemed healthy. Their color had even started to return.
But he still didn’t know if that meant much. Cenz’s species required a certain number of polyps to be alive and aware to actually achieve a complex level of consciousness. Alone, each polyp was only a fraction of a being. If most of the polyps didn’t survive, then, would that be the end of their Science Officer?
He had no idea, and he hated that.
Their medical records were dense and complex; it was so rare that a human ever needed to deal with them in this way that there just hadn’t been a lot made available and digestible.
He would just have to rely on the medical computer. It was not Dr. Y, though, and for a moment he wished the laws of the Sapient Union were more lenient on artificial intelligences like their doctor. He’d give half his augments just for the doctor’s consultation right now.
But that wasn’t an option, and he would just have to work with what he had on hand.
He was doing his best, but the familiar old shame of inadequacy haunted him. He should be better than this. He’d pushed himself all his life to be the best he could be.
He’d sacrificed half of his biological body to better himself. And yet here he sat again, feeling it hadn’t been enough.
Quadruple-checking Cenz and then all the medical systems, he knew he was still on-duty as shift officer. Absently, he began to look over the sensor logs, hoping for the vast quantities of data to scrub his mind of his own feelings.
The computers did this automatically, sorting what seemed relevant from what was extraneous. Who needed to know about vacuum purity logs?
He did, of course. He much preferred to take in the raw data logs and let his own personal filters sort them. And he set a different bar for relevancy; many things the computer did not consider important to share he’d look at.
Better to be sure. He had the processing power for it.
He caught an odd fluctuation. The vacuum outside the ship had registered spikes of gas. That typically meant an airlock leaking, but this was on the outer side of the vessel, away from the airlock.
Focusing on that, Urle saw that the spikes of gas density, when traced back along a path, occurred in a line, along the side of the hull. But they stopped just around halfway down her length. After that just short little bursts . . . before heading back.
That would only match a person or drone operating a thruster system. But they were in private docking, and the system was set to warn him of any being approaching the ship like that.
Quickly he flipped through the logs, searching for any relevant information.
Then he jumped out of his chair.
“Captain!” he said over an open channel. “Someone’s put something on our hull.”
Brooks came back a moment later. “Repeat? Are we under attack?”
“Don’t know, Captain. Someone got into our system somehow. They used a flaw in our hardware to file a standard hard-vac inspection ticket, but got it marked as unimportant so our system didn’t inform us. They stopped at our midline, and when they left I believe they were lighter – like they left something behind.”
Brooks came back. “Can you send a drone?”
“If they were this good, I think they’d be ready for that. I want to check it personally.”
Brooks considered. “Do it,” he said. “Take someone else rated for this kind of work with you.”
Other Terrestrial 